Not Funny

I don’t think there’ll be a single chuckle in this whole post, and for that I apologise. Fact is, I pretty much just want to skite a bit.

Tonight I received a message from a teacher at James Nash High School, where Master11 and Miss13 enrolled for the two weeks we’re back in Gympie. Not that it’s that obvious what’s going on. Since enrolling one week ago they’ve missed, I think, a combined four days of school.

The message said:

Today in my Year 7 English class the students had to write about something for which they are grateful. One young fellow did not want to share his out loud, so I asked if he’d share with me privately (I’ll let him tell you about his story). Until then I had no idea of Josh’shistory: he just appeared in my class last week. What a delightful, hardworking young man you are raising. It is an absolute delight to have him in our class. He has fitted in really well.

I reread the first part of the message at this point.

“How many Josh’s are in your class?” I called out to Master11.

“Just me, I think.”

So it was definitely him.

Naturally, I wrote back and both thanked the teacher for taking the time to message me and set her to rights about what a pain in the bum he is. But can I just say how awesome it feels to get a message like that, where the teacher has taken time out of her evening to make sure the kid’s parent knows something special about their day.

I love teachers.

On a not entirely related topic, I took the other four of our kids to the library today for homeschooling. In the end I let the kids borrow fifty books and we left with me apologising to the staff for the mess and racket.

I love teachers so much but I think, weighing up what they’ve chosen to do for a living, they might be a little cuckoo.

That aside, this evening I spoke to Master11 about the message I’d received and he told me what had happened in class. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what it was about. The title of his essay, if you do need a clue, was I Am Grateful For My Mum Being Alive.

In an entirely related topic, we had a message from the RBWH a week or so ago and Tracey is back on the list for surgery in the next few months instead of next year! In even betterer news, Dr Brown, Tracey’s wonderful surgeon who lead the charge in bringing Tracey Frankenbowel back to life, is going to be involved.

Not least because I now get to, firstly, brag about a teacher saying I’m doing a good job raising our son (yes, that’s what I took away from that), and secondly, I can segue into a nice coincidence whereby Toyota has asked if I can help with a survey they’re doing – trust me, there is a connection.

Normally I’d say ‘no, thank you’ to this sort of thing, but they’ve offered a bit of money, so here I am.

Instead of keeping all the cash, though, what I thought was you and I could put it to good use together. I can’t send it to you – because the logistics would be the end of me – but how about for every person who completes the survey I’ll donate $2 of my fee (up to $200, because I can’t afford to go backwards) to LifeFlight.

As many readers will be aware, LifeFlight were instrumental in transferring Tracey mid-operation from Nambour Hospital to RBWH (and Dr Brown’s gifted team) when she decided to try dying on us back in 2015, so they’re sort of my heroes, meaning I want to donate the whole $200.

Please do this for them, and families like ours who will need them to be in the air and available.

I’ve checked out the questions and the survey should only take you a minute or so. Thanks everyone – you’re the best!

As are you, Miss Rumsey. Thank you for messaging us and making our night.

And yes, there were tears. Beautiful, happy and ever so grateful tears.

NOTE: We did it! We hit the 100 completed surveys so LifeFlight will be receiving $200 because of all of you! In fact, I’m glad I put a lid on the amount because 700 (!!!!) people filled it in. OMG I’d have had to sell a kidney, probably requiring an airlift myself. Thank you, everyone!

Raising a family on little more than laughs

Not sure if this counts as a sponsored post or not – yes? Let’s say yes.